ara found that she could not read an inch behind
those grave gray eyes. She found his quiet countenance as unreadable
as that of the utmost stranger might have been. And while she waited,
not entirely certain how displeased she was at his deliberation, a
blackest of black horses soared splendidly over a fence to the north
and came cantering down the road. The rider, a tall, bare-headed girl,
lifted her crop in salute as she caught sight of them.

"My friend, Miriam Burrell," the girl murmured in explanation to Steve,
and something had gone from her voice and left it conventionally
impersonal. "She's riding Ragtime, and isn't he a beauty--almost as
much a beauty as she is herself?"

The horse came on, to be reined up at last directly in front of the two
at the roadside. Stephen O'Mara met for a moment the level, measuring
glance of its rider, before Miriam Burrell turned to Barbara.

"I've enjoyed exceedingly our morning canter, Bobs," her alto voice
drawled.

Then, before Barbara could reply, she threw one booted leg from the
stirrup and dismounted. With the reins looped over her elbow she faced
the man in blue flannel and corduroy, a tall, lithe figure with coppery
red hair and whitest skin and doubly vivid lips.

"You're Stephen O'Mara," she said, and the calmly direct statement
might have been overbrusk had it not been for the modulation of her low
voice. "You're Stephen O'Mara, for a thousand!"

And she held out a gauntleted hand, the clasp of which corroborated the
suggestion of wirelike strength in that lithely straight body.

Barbara Allison had never been able to analyze her preference for
Miriam Burrell. Even the girl's undeniable beauty of face had often
puzzled her, for, taken each feature by itself, it was far more
striking than beautiful. There was no color in her pale skin; her red
mouth, if anything, was a trifle too wide, and her wide-set eyes were
tip-tilted in an almost Oriental slant. Her utter lack of hypocrisy,
her unsparing arraignment of fundamental motives--her own and those of
all with whom she came in contact--often resulted in calmly direct
comments which were stunningly disastrous to casual conversation. For
Miriam Burrell told the truth to others, which was unusual enough to
puzzle more than a few; she did not lie to herself, and that was an
enigma to almost all. It resulted, of course, in a reputation for
"unconventionalism."

There was scarcely a day passed but that he